For the first time since "Gilmore Girls" and "Veronica Mars" aired back-to-back nearly a decade ago, Tuesday night has become appointment-TV night again. A couple of unlikely shows have propped up Tuesday night's status: "Scream" (10 p.m. Eastern on MTV) and "Dead of Summer" (9 p.m. Eastern on Freeform). Whereas other nights have a decent show here and there (such as Wednesday's "Penn & Teller: Fool Us"), Tuesday is the only night that currently gets me excited to come home from work and fire up my DVR.

"Scream: The TV Series" (11 p.m. Eastern Mondays on MTV) gradually got better over the course of its first season, and with the second-season premiere, it is now rewarding people who stuck with the series. It's not great TV, but it is now good, solid, fun TV.

Entertainment trends are a funny thing. Horror movie releases have slowed to a trickle, whereas a decade ago there was a new one in theaters every week. But horror TV shows were rare then, whereas today, the boob tube is covered with them. Even though horror is still scarier on the big screen for obvious reasons, TV is making a strong case as a home for horror in 2015 -- some of the best horror TV ever made, actually.

"Scream: The TV Series" (9 p.m. Tuesdays on MTV) knows what it wants to be. As is the tradition in this increasingly meta franchise, the format of the series is explained by one of the characters: Noah (John Karna), this show's answer to Randy (Jamie Kennedy) from the 1996 movie.

Eleven years after "Scream 3," the casting director of "Scream 4" had a lot of lost time to make up for. While the original film in 1996 brought big-screen attention to "Party of Five" star Neve Campbell and "Friends" star Courteney Cox, this installment isn't content to pick out a couple Next Big Things.